posted in Technology
Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying
www.thenerve.news/p/cory-doctorow-ai-business-incentive-to-lie-useless-chatbots-report-nikhil-suresh
The NerveCory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lyingIt has become impossible to tell managers mesmerised by artificial intelligence that the tools are not, in fact, helpful. So employees just play along with the fiction to keep their jobs, writes our tech columnistReplying to @floofloof@lemmy.ca
In my academic field of sustainability, AI still fails to explain what economic sustainability means. It’s very simple.
I lecture and explain to my students that economic sustainability is about how we assess and manage our knowledge, innovations, wealth, and other man-made capital. I stress that it is ABSOLUTELY NOT profit and revenue.
Sure enough, my students submit assignments clearly written by AI that state economic sustainability is profit and revenue.
AI is regurgitating decades of green-washing and even bad academic articles that state economic sustainability is about profits. I use that AI god mode site to test several AI’s at once and they’ve consistently gotten this wrong for 3 years.
Replying to @jmsy@lemmy.world
The trick that AI pulls is just that it is really good at appearing competent, and we as humans really bad at acknowledging how little we individually know about the world around us.
The easiest example to ask AI detailed questions about something that you know you have expertise in. If you try to test its limit, no matter what your particular expertise is, I’m confident that in 5-10 minutes you’ll realize it’s no more intelligent than an average Joe who spent their lunch break Googling the subject or maybe someone who read a book about it once.
To give credit where it’s due, that does mean that these AIs have a much wider breadth of knowledge than any one person could have and that is, objectively, very cool.
On the other hand, that’s why it’s so easy to believe that AI is this all-knowing oracle that can replace all of humanity. It can give you a way better answer in an instant about things you know nothing about than you ever could off the top of your head, so it seems unbelievable. It’s instant gratification that also feels really valuable.
Despite the trick that AI plays on our psychology, you could also just read a book or two or participate in any form of genuine learning, and it really doesn’t take long for you to outgrow whatever the AI is capable of. It takes a bit longer, but now you have grown your actual intelligence and you get to keep it for a $0/month subscription and they don’t need to build another data center in your backyard.
Replying to @ID10T@programming.dev
that’s also how really successful human beings work. they bullshit and lie and appear confident, and people believe them and ignore the people who don’t do that, because they don’t appear as confident.
also why people basically fall in love with AI, because it spouts nothing but bullshit at them and they eat it up like candy because being fed back bullshit is a dopamine hit.
interacting with real people doesn’t supply endless dopamine and they might not tell you what you want to hear.